


5 seconds (to clear my conscience)

by TabbyCat33098



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Character Death Fix, Character Study, Existential Angst, Fix-It, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 20:03:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18972031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TabbyCat33098/pseuds/TabbyCat33098
Summary: Endgame spoilers inside!Steve travels back in time to return the Infinity Stones to their rightful places in the spacetime continuum. Along the way, he loses something he didn't mean to and picks up something he didn't expect to.@ Russos, what's good y'all





	5 seconds (to clear my conscience)

**Author's Note:**

> We're using our made-up MCU, ladies! Mostly because I don't remember a damn thing prior to Endgame. This fic is held together by IMDB quotes pages and Wikipedia rabbit holes. 
> 
> I wrote this fic over the course of 3 weeks, then typed it up and edited it in a single 15-hour binge. I have not slept in 24 hours, oops. Typos are 100% on me; please let me know if you spot any!
> 
> Disclaimer: Did you know that the Viking funerals portrayed in movies are by and large Hollywood lies and factually incorrect? There's a paragraph in this fic that I spent an hour writing because I was so deep in my research. My description of Viking funerals is not entirely accurate to history, as I ultimately wanted to stay true to the MCU, but I tried my best.
> 
> I also have not actually seen Dr. Strange yet, so I apologize for any canonical or character mistakes I've made. Opening dialogue is lifted from Endgame. 
> 
> The title comes from "Sacrifice" by tATu. If you want DVD commentary for any sentences, paragraphs, or scenes, drop me a comment. This fic has been a WILD ride.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

“Remember, you have to return the Stones to the exact moment we got them or you’re going to open up a bunch of nasty alternative realities,” Bruce tells him. He hears the undertone: Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t change any timelines.

“Don’t worry, Bruce,” Steve replies. He repeats what Bruce had told him earlier. “Clip all the branches.”

He says his goodbyes, lets the familiar banter wash over him before he climbs onto the platform, briefcase in hand.  

“How long is this gonna take?” Sam asks.

“For him? As long as he needs. For us? Five seconds.”

He picks up Mjolnir, too, the heft of the hammer an already familiar weight against his palm.

“Ready, Captain?” Bruce asks. Steve takes a breath. Nods. “Alright. I’ll meet you back here, okay?”

“You bet.” The helmet forms over his face. The last thing he hears before the Quantum Realm tears him into a permutation of his individual atoms is Bruce counting down.

“Going quantum. 3, 2, 1—”

**5.**

They don’t find Tony’s body.

It takes a few minutes to realize it’s missing, distracted with relief and pain and victory as they all are. Thanos collapses, Tony’s parting “I am Iron Man” ringing out over their comms – and then there is only dust, and empty swaths of battlefield where opponents once stood, and echoes of gunfire and clashing metal dissipating into the air.

Steve shakes off the shock first. “Iron Man, report in,” he says as he begins walking towards where he’d last seen Thanos. The dust has turned the air hazy. It obscures his vision, coats his lungs.

When he doesn’t hear a response, he breaks into a jog, clambering over rubble and abandoned weapons with his own shattered shield and Mjolnir still in hand. “Iron Man?” he calls again, louder now in case Tony’s comm is broken or he’s out of the suit. Pepper’s voice sounds out, too, tinged with desperation and hysteria as she yells for Tony to say something.

Steve senses more than sees the other Avengers converging on Tony’s last known location. The spider-kid is the first to reach the spot, with Pepper close behind. By the time Steve arrives, both are sporting expressions of dismay.

“Is he okay?” Steve asks, faltering ever so slightly on the last word. They hear the question he can’t bring himself to ask, Natasha’s absence still smarting too much for him to propose the possibility of another loss.

Pepper turns to him with tears in her eyes. She manages to get out “He isn’t—” before her voice catches. She doesn’t say anything more, sinking to her knees instead and revealing what she had found: Tony’s version of the gauntlet, loosely curled in on itself in the shadow of a downed airship, gleaming dimly red and gold even in the low light. With no power source to secure them, the Stones have fallen out of their sockets, and they lie scattered in a cluster around the gauntlet. There is no sign of the Iron Man suit, or of Tony himself.

Steve pivots sharply and whips his head from side to side, surveying the immediate surroundings. Tony couldn’t have gone far, and certainly not out of Steve’s sightlines. So where is he? “Tony!” Steve shouts. “Tony?”

Tony doesn’t respond.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Bruce says two days later as they sift through the rubble, looking for fallen comrades and leftover alien technology and something to distract them from a reality that still hasn’t set in. “The radiation would have caused him excruciating pain, maybe burned his arm to a crisp, but it wouldn’t have— wouldn’t have disintegrated him, or vanished him out of existence, and it certainly wouldn’t have taken the suit with him. That’s not what radiation does.” He keeps talking as he hefts a slab of concrete into the air, allowing Steve to crouch and shine a flashlight into the cavity underneath. “Unless the Stones cause adverse effects that weren’t seen with the Hulk? Or maybe the Stones interacted poorly with the arc reactor, causing destructive interference due to the clashing energy sources.” Curiosity has filtered into Bruce’s voice now, and it gives Steve pause.

He stares, unseeing, at the flattened grass illuminated by his flashlight. “These Stones carry an incomprehensible amount of power,” he says, cutting Bruce off. Grief burns bright in his chest, and he lets it harden his tone. “I’ll be happy to see them returned and out of our hands.” He stays like that for a moment before pushing himself back up to his feet. “On to the next one. There’s nothing here.”

**4.**

Thor is the one to suggest a Viking funeral. “In the tradition of my ancestors,” he explains, “the greatest fallen warriors were laid to rest on mighty boats accompanied by offerings and weapons. The boat was cast to sea, to ensure safe and steady passage to Valhalla, then set ablaze with flaming arrows.” His voice grows soft and his gaze unfocused, like he’s describing a memory and not a myth. A small smile tugs at his lips. “You cannot imagine how brightly the sky burns, nor how the water glows in a brilliant tapestry of red and orange. It is a sight spectacular enough to rival the warrior’s own feats. I can think of no greater way to honor the sacrifices Stark made to ensure our victory.”

But the funeral arrangements stall there. The lack of a body leaves nothing to place on the boat itself.

“Maybe an old suit?” Clint suggests, but Pepper and the spider-kid – Peter, he’d said – deny him immediately, Pepper’s “no” quiet and anguished, Peter’s loud and horrified.

“He wasn’t just a suit,” Peter argues, vehement in a way that surprises Steve. “He was— There was— He was a _person_ inside the suit. He was human, just like us! Every bit of what he did out there was human, and he should— he deserves to have his humanity remembered. He deserves to be remembered as a person, and a dad, and a, a mentor, and not just an Avenger.” He’s choking on his tears by now. Pepper cuts in, letting Peter turn away and wipe his eyes and blow his nose.

“I’m mourning Tony Stark, not Iron Man,” she says simply. The statement drops like a bomb, reverberating through the room and making more than one person wince. Steve is reminded again of the family Tony left behind – the ideals he sacrificed – to save their lives. The knowledge leaves an acrid taste in his mouth.

The other kid, standing in the corner near Clint, clears his throat. Steve isn’t quite sure who he is, but he had been named in Tony’s will, had been bequeathed a sizeable trust fund, a job at Stark Industries upon graduation, and sole ownership of the patent for the Potato Gun Mark II. That last line had stood out to Steve where hundreds of others had faded into white noise, coming entirely out of left field in a will entrenched in legalese and discussing the apportioning of millions of dollars in assets and possessions, but the kid had only chuckled wetly and swore it was the least Tony could do.

“What about one of his older robots?” the kid says now. “Or an old arc reactor? The guy was a mechanic at heart. I can’t think of anything that encapsulates him as well as something he made to fix a problem someone else created.” Laughter ripples through the room at that, because somehow this lanky boy with shaggy hair that none of them have met before has summed up Tony Stark in a single phrase with unerring accuracy.

Steve turns to Pepper to see what she thinks. After all, of the people gathered here, she is the one who knows Tony the best, knows what he has created and what is most representative of his personality. He’s just in time to see her eyes go wide before she hurries out of the room, the click-clack of her heels against the marble floors fading rapidly. The silence she leaves in her wake is awkward but comforting, none of them knowing what to say to fill the Iron Man-shaped hole in the room.

Tony would have known exactly what to say, Steve thinks. He would have happily chattered about something inane and too technical for the rest of them to follow, his rambling peppered with innuendo and teasing barbs in equal measure. There wouldn’t have been time for them to mourn, because they all would have been yelling at Tony instead.

As the silence stretches out, taut and heavy like taffy, Steve wonders if he should take up that mantle. He starts flipping through his rolodex of memories, trying to conjure an appropriate anecdote – but then he looks around the room and drops the notion. He’s not Tony. It feels disingenuous to try and fill that space, to replace a man who is fundamentally irreplaceable. And wouldn’t Tony get a laugh out of that – Tony, who has spent his whole life striving to step out of Howard’s shadow, leaving behind shoes that are too big to fill.

Pepper returns before Steve can start critiquing his own flaws in earnest. She’s carrying a clear glass box containing something dark and metallic, which she places on the coffee table before retreating to her armchair.

One by one, the gathered Avengers step forward to examine the thing. Reactions are varied, Steve notes; Colonel Rhodes laughs a little, while Peter lets out something akin to a strangled sob. When Steve finally gets a chance to look at the thing, he understands why. It’s an older version of the arc reactor, the recess in the center circular rather than triangular. The whole unwieldy chunk of metal juts up from the base in a manner reminiscent of a trophy or a historical artifact on display at a museum. The surrounding frame declares the reactor “proof that Tony Stark has a heart” in clean, capital letters.

It’s perfect.

**3.**

He visits Morag first, because it’s the easiest. No allies to avoid; no battles to skirt. Just an empty temple on a wasteland of a planet, where the largest threat now that Thanos is gone is no bigger than one of Tony’s robots and dumber to boot.

Steve slips into the temple just after Nebula is taken. The dust that she and Colonel Rhodes disturbed upon their entrance lingers in the air and tickles Steve’s nose.

He had seen the blackened remains of Nebula’s arm, so he doesn’t try to place the Power Stone directly back into its container. He ends up tossing the Stone in a light underhand. He watches it drop into the cylinder of light, bouncing in midair once, twice, before coming to a standstill.

A beat passes. Nothing happens.

“Well, that was easy,” he says, his voice too loud in the empty temple. He waits another long second, though for what, he doesn’t know – a reply? Applause? Another enemy? But time stretches with nothing to fill it, and Steve’s pulse starts ringing in his ears, so he keys in the next coordinates into his bracelet, picks Mjolnir back up, and zips off to Asgard.

Rocket’s distinctive grumbling cuts through the air when Steve lands, sending him scrambling to hide behind a pillar. “Some excuse for a god,” Rocket mutters. “You want something done, you gotta do it yourself.” The raccoon maintains a leisurely pace towards an ornate set of double doors at the far end of the hallway. Steve follows him from a distance, watches him throw open the doors and waltz into the suite, and ducks behind one of the doors to wait.

It’s not long before Steve hears a commotion inside. Rocket sprints out again a few minutes later, yelling for Thor as he goes. Jane stumbles out after him, shouting at him to stop.

It’s all too easy for Steve to walk up behind her and press the Reality Stone against the nape of her neck. The direct contact with the Stone causes her to go taut before crumpling in a limp heap. Steve wraps an arm around her waist to catch her as she falls. He drags her off to the side and lowers her gently against a pillar, placing the Stone beside her and praying an Asgardian will notice before it falls into the wrong hands. There’s not much else he can do without risking the creation of another reality.

As on Morag, he pauses and contemplates Jane’s slack visage. Yet again, he waits for something to happen – for the universe to shift, maybe, or for reality to click back into place. But as on Morag, time continues to pass, and reality gives no indication that it has been tampered with. Even Rocket’s calls for Thor have faded into the distance, little more than the occasional faint echo ricocheting through the halls.

“Two down,” Steve says to himself. He takes a breath and returns to the shadow behind the door, where he’d left Mjolnir and the briefcase when Jane had emerged.

But when he reaches for Mjolnir, the hammer is missing.

He stares at his empty hand for a moment, flexes his fingers around thin air.

It’s a shame. He’d liked the hammer, the way she felt like a natural extension of his body, the way she complemented his shield like a matched set of weaponry. But if she’s missing, then someone else must need her more than Steve does. Steve won’t begrudge them that; if the past five years have taught him anything, it’s to appreciate the time he has had rather than mourn the time he hasn’t.

He types in the next coordinates. This time, when he disintegrates into the most loosely given value of Steve Rogers, he doesn’t so much as flinch.

The first thing he notices about Vormir is the eerie silence that blankets it. Every sound Steve makes seems amplified, propagating through the stagnant air without noticeably dampening. He wanders aimlessly, waiting for the man Clint had mentioned to appear.

Eventually, a hooded figure glides forth to meet him. When it pushes back its hood to reveal Johann Schmidt’s skeletal crimson features, Steve can’t help the shout that leaves him, or the way he raises the briefcase in front of him like a shield.

Schmidt’s lip curls, but he gives no other indication that he recognizes Steve. “I will be your guide,” he says. He doesn’t wait for an answer before turning his back on Steve and moving away, already fading into the haze.

A curl of annoyance blooms in Steve’s chest at being so blatantly dismissed, though he doesn’t know what he would say to Schmidt given the chance. Is this even Schmidt, or just something bearing his likeness? Steve can’t imagine how Schmidt could have survived for so many years on this desolate planet – but then, Steve himself is proof that stranger things have happened. And his mission was solely to return the Stones, not to lay waste to the enemies he would no doubt encounter, no matter how much they deserve it.

So Steve swallows down his irritation and anger and confusion. He breathes. He follows.

They climb a mountain. Steve loses track of time and distance, idly wonders if they’re making any progress at all, or if Schmidt is only wearing him out to make it easier to kill him. Then they turn a corner, and suddenly the whole planet is laid out before them, lavender-grey crags littering the landscape and stretching all the way to the jagged horizon. Dilapidated stone pillars stand in neat rows on the clifftop, bracketing a crumbling shrine.

Schmidt stands off to one side, observing Steve with a face devoid of expression. It’s jarring, to see a man who was once so filled with hatred meet Steve’s eyes with such apathy. It leaves Steve feeling wrong-footed and on edge.

He’s been feeling that way since he watched Bucky turn to dust before his very eyes, though. Since the world ground to a dead halt even as it carried on spinning. He shakes himself and pulls the Soul Stone from the briefcase, rolls it around in his palm to avoid looking at Schmidt. It’s unexpectedly warm, even through the fabric of the time travel suit.

“If I give you this, will you give back Natasha?” he asks, Bruce’s guilt-ridden confession echoing in the back of his mind.

“To nullify a sacrifice would render it meaningless,” Schmidt says, his accent catching on the consonants and sending an instinctive spike of anger through Steve’s veins. “Nor is she yours to bargain. Tell me, Captain, what is dearest to your heart? What would you sacrifice the greatest power in the world to obtain?”

He has to think, but once he figures it out, it’s obvious there’s no other answer. “Tony,” he says, because there’s no one else he owes more. It never should have been Tony on that battlefield, laying his life on the wire while Steve watched from the sidelines. Steve had gotten his second chance at life already; it’s not right that Tony gave up his own second chance so Steve could have a third.

Steve finally looks up from the Soul Stone in his hand when Schmidt extends a closed fist. Schmidt’s fingers unfurl to reveal a time travel bracelet with Pym particles still glittering within. The realization that this must have been Natasha’s, retrieved from wherever her corpse lays, slams into Steve with all the force of a punch to the gut.

“This isn’t Tony,” he says, even as he drops the Stone into Schmidt’s palm, exchanging it for the bracelet. He turns to tuck the bracelet into his pocket. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

He doesn’t get a response. When he looks up, Schmidt is gone.

Steve doesn’t have anywhere to be, and he has all the time in the universe to get there, so instead of plugging in the next coordinates, he plods to the edge of the cliff and sits down, letting his legs dangle off the edge. It’s a dizzying drop, but he thinks he could survive, albeit with a broken bone or twelve. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, weighing lives against each other – his and Tony’s, Tony’s and Natasha’s, Clint’s and Natasha’s, Tony’s and the universe’s. He wonders if all death is a sacrifice and therefore irreversible, if circumventing death would render life meaningless. Wonders if it’s truly the soul of the person who dies that the Soul Stone demands, or if it’s the soul of the person who remains behind, the one who has to live with that decision weighing on their shoulders and that blood on their hands, knowing they watched an innocent life blink out of existence for the sake of power.

Maybe that’s why Steve still feels hollow inside. Even the Soul Stone can’t return someone’s humanity to them.

“Damn you,” he says to himself, and then again, louder, “Damn you!” The words ring through the open air, bouncing between rock faces and craggy valleys, and Steve revels in the echoes that return to him, magnifying his pain and anger a thousand times over.

And then, softly – “Language,” he admonishes, because Tony isn’t there to say it himself.

**2.**

It takes some effort to find where the Tesseract is stored, but eventually he relieves a janitor of his uniform, asks around for Howard Stark under the pretense of having a message from Maria, and slips into the appropriate elevator behind a portly man who pays him no mind. The alarm has already been sounded for Tony and the other Steve, so he’ll have to hurry, but he won’t be the primary focus of the search. Silver linings, he thinks.

The case that had once housed the Tesseract is easy enough to find: It hangs slightly ajar, the clasps completely melted away. Steve spares a moment to close his eyes and tamp down the annoyance that seems to come hand in hand with knowing Tony Stark. He places the Space Stone into the cubic gap within the case, grimacing at the mismatched shapes. It’s not his problem, though. He’s done what he came to do.

He can’t help making a detour afterwards, even though he knows he’s risking the fate of the multiverse to do so. He borrows a car and buys a half dozen roses before returning to the compound. He waits until Peggy heads out for the day, tails her to a picturesque house in the middle of a quiet neighborhood. He gives her a few minutes before he parks the car, walks up to her front door, and knocks. One of her hands flies to her mouth when she sees him, and he pushes the roses toward her in an effort to distract her before shock can set in.

He tells her the truth, or a version of it, over tea. That he comes from an alternate reality where aliens and gods and superheroes are real; that myriad storms are brewing on her horizon; that he can’t stay long, but he made her a promise, and he’s selfish enough to want to keep it.

They dance, sweet and slow and silent, to a jazzy piece playing on the radio. Peggy feels soft, almost fragile, pressed up against Steve like this. The leisurely pace of their swaying, the tenderness with which Peggy kisses him, are a stark contrast to the force with which Steve had been wielding Mjolnir just days prior.

Perhaps it’s for the best that he and Peggy hadn’t gotten their happy ending in his universe. Peggy may be an incredible woman, but Steve balks at the thought of putting her through Loki, Sokovia, Thanos, and everything in between, never knowing if he was coming back. One goodbye was hard enough, and a second is almost more than he can handle; he doesn’t have the fortitude for a lifetime of them.

He does give her a parting gift: the coordinates where his frozen body had been found in 2012, though he doesn’t tell her what she’ll find. Maybe this reality’s Steve and Peggy can find the happiness that 2023’s Steve is still chasing.

“Are you happy?” she asks when he finally, regretfully, disentangles himself from her and picks up the briefcase again.

He thinks about it. “I’m trying to be,” he says finally.

She smiles at him. Her red lipstick is enthralling in the evening light. “That’s all any of us can do.”

He almost doesn’t leave her; almost turns back around and asks if she’ll let him take her out. The remaining two Stones are both in New York, and both run the risk of Steve running into Tony, and he dreads the journey that awaits him. So much had gone wrong the first time they’d come back; what complications will he encounter this time?

Nothing more than having to evade an angry store owner shouting at him in Urdu after he pilfers a baseball cap from a tourist outlet, it turns out. The janitor’s outfit combined with the hat pulled low over his eyes afford him something akin to invisibility as he makes his way through the halls of Stark Tower.

He hears glass shatter nearby and quickens his pace, turning a few more corners before the walkway where the other Steves are fighting comes into view. Steve tucks himself into the shadow of a potted plant before he can be seen. In all likelihood, he doesn’t have anything to worry about; from what he can remember of this fight, he’d been too focused on obtaining the scepter to pay attention to his surroundings, and he’s willing to bet his younger counterpart was similarly preoccupied.

He conducts a perfunctory scan of the perimeter, but this stretch of the Tower appears to be deserted. It’s almost disappointing. He’s itching to throw a couple right hooks and work off some of the tension that has seeped into his muscles from meeting Schmidt and leaving Peggy again.

Instead, he waits and watches himself kick his own ass. Watches as the first Steve gets the second Steve in a headlock, watches the second Steve reveal the truth about Bucky and use the scepter on the first Steve, watches the second Steve check out the first Steve’s ass.

It’s a good ass, even from this distance. Steve allows himself a smug smirk.

He crawls onto the walkway once the second Steve is gone and places the Mind Stone beside the first Steve, just as he had placed the Reality Stone next to Jane. There’s no time for him to sit around and contemplate the way his actions have prevented the collapse of the multiverse – Stark Tower is much more populated than the desolate planets he’s visited thus far, and the longer he spends here, the more he risks being discovered – so he breathes, tugs the bill of his cap down, and leaves.

He pauses once he’s a few blocks away to let the existential dismay wash through him. He’d been anticipating the worst, but it’s done now. The Stone has been returned, all is good with the world, and no one will ever know Steve’s role in this cosmic drama. No one will know that Steve had tilted this universe on its axis and then righted it in the same breath, because he’ll cease to exist in this universe in an hour anyway, all with the help of the tiny device encircling his palm –

And that’s when he figures it out. That’s when he realizes why giving up the Soul Stone hadn’t brought Tony back: Tony isn’t somewhere the Stone can bring him from.

A plan begins to crystallize in Steve’s mind as he makes his way to the Ancient One, taking the stairs two by two. Her back is to the door when he emerges onto the rooftop. She doesn’t turn around. After a moment, he steps forward to stand by her. They take in the wreckage of the Battle of New York together. Already, sirens are ringing through the streets, the police clearing debris and opening roads so ambulances can reach the injured.

Steve passes the Time Stone to the Ancient One without looking at her, and she takes it without looking at him, and—

That’s it. All six Stones are back in their respective timelines. He’s done what he’s supposed to. For the first time since he stepped foot on Morag, he doesn’t feel like he’s waiting for the universe to right itself. He’s got plans of his own.

The Ancient One finally turns to face Steve when Steve takes a step away from the banister. “Give my regards to Dr. Banner,” she says after a moment. “And congratulations on your victory.”

Steve smiles in return, inclines his head in silent thanks. In the immediate aftermath, he’d hesitated to apply that word to the outcome of the battle. It hadn’t felt accurate, not with the losses still weighing heavy in their hearts.

But it will be accurate soon enough.

He has one more stop to make.

**1.**

Steve materializes some distance away from the battlefield and hits the ground running, pushing himself until his muscles start to burn. He can’t screw up this timing.

He knows where they found the Gauntlet, where Tony vanished at the same time as Thanos. He creeps into the battle now with that location as his target, working his way through the fringes at first and heading into the thick of the fight when he has no other option. It’s agony to watch his comrades bleed and fall while he hides behind corpses and mounds of dirt, but he can’t be seen. He only has one shot at this.

He reaches Tony and Thanos just as Tony lunges at Thanos’ hand. Steve watches with bated breath as first Thanos, then Tony snaps. Thanos’ army begins to disintegrate around them, and Thanos sinks to the ground. Tony staggers to the side, too, and collapses into a heap, close enough to Steve that he can see the bags under Tony’s eyes and the blood streaming down his cheek.

Steve doesn’t waste time on concern. He knows the Avengers will be distracted for a few moments by the slow disappearance of Thanos’ forces, but it’ll only take a minute for Peter, Pepper, and Steve himself to head towards Tony. Steve moves quickly, darting forward and pulling Tony back into the shadow of the airship hull he was using as cover. He wrestles off the gauntlet as he goes.

“Steve? Steve, what, what, what are you— Weren’t you— Where’s Mjolnir?” Tony stutters, his voice strained and reedy.

Steve ignores him in favor of examining the hand that had donned the Gauntlet. It’s singed and mangled, looking so fragile that Steve thinks it might turn to dust if he so much as breathes on it. So he pulls Tony’s other hand into his lap, stretches Natasha’s time travel bracelet over Tony’s fingers, armor and all, and syncs Tony’s bracelet with his own. As his molecules begin to rend themselves apart and buckle into the Quantum Realm, Steve tightens his grip on Tony’s hand, and Tony squeezes back ever so slightly, and—

**0.**

They collapse onto the platform, still holding hands. The sun is painfully bright in Steve’s eyes after the gloom he had just navigated. Tony cries out, drawing Steve’s attention and galvanizing him into action. He pulls Tony towards him, and shouts at Sam to call for Shuri and Dr. Strange as Bruce lumbers onto the platform, and wonders if he was in time.

The next few days are a blur. The medical team spends two long nights shielding Tony’s vital organs and isolating the radiation before it can start scrambling the DNA elsewhere in his body. He loses his arm on the third day, goes into cardiac arrest on the fifth. But by the eighth, his breathing has grown steadier, and color begins to fill his cheeks.

As the second week rolls into the third, Tony opens his eyes for the first time and rasps out something unintelligible. The sound rouses Steve, who was dozing in the armchair opposite Tony’s bed, and he rushes to press a glass of water to Tony’s lips.

“Thanos, the gauntlet, did we—” Tony says before he breaks down coughing. Steve reaches out to rub his back but pauses midway, leaving his hand to hover awkwardly in the air.

“It’s just like you to forget your priorities,” Steve teases, affecting a casual tone he doesn’t quite feel.

Tony’s brow furrows. Even half-dead, his brain runs light-years ahead of Steve’s. It only takes him a minute to put the pieces together. “You took me from the past,” he says, “and brought me into the aftermath. The future. You messed with the fabric of reality to keep me alive.”

“It was the only way,” Steve says. He withdraws his hand. Tony sounds – not appalled, but not far from it. But Steve won’t apologize. Not for saving Tony’s life. “It wouldn’t have been much of a victory if Earth lost its greatest defender in the process.”

Tony’s eyes narrow, and he leans away from Steve. “You brought me back to keep fighting your battles,” he accuses, and the venom in his voice makes Steve flinch.

“No! No, that’s not—” Steve’s hands clench around the bedsheets in frustration. He looks away. Breathes. “I’ve made you a lot of promises, over the years. Win or lose, we’d do it together. If you needed me, I’d be there. Whatever it took. Haven’t been great at following through on those promises, but I kept making them anyway.” He chuckles a little ruefully, still steadfastly avoiding Tony’s gaze. “The thing is, if you die, it’s another broken promise on my conscience. And that’s not a price I’m willing to pay. I wasn’t there with you when we lost everything, but I’ll be damned if I’m not there with you to win it back. As it turns out, I’m just selfish enough to want to keep my word.”

Tony’s hand nudges up against Steve’s, prompting Steve to look back at Tony. A ghost of a smile rests on Tony’s lips as he wheezes, “You can’t keep taking on the world alone every time it refuses to bend to your whims.”

Steve grins, too. “I won’t have to. Why do you think I brought you back?”

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist: Captain America's Rootin' Tootin' Reality-Transmutin' Time-Traveling Adventure  
> 1\. Another Soldier - The Feeling  
> 2\. Stay With Me - Chanyeol and Punch  
> 3\. Sacrifice - tATu  
> 4\. Six Degrees of Separation - The Script  
> 5\. Sub / Objective - boku no lyric no bouyomi  
> 6\. Long Gone and Moved On - The Script
> 
> I don't own the franchise, the movies, the characters, or the dialogue in the opening scene. This is a fanmade work. Please ask permission before translating or crossposting.


End file.
